Monday, 16 May 2016

Harriet Harman has claimed campaigners calling for Britain to leave the EU are more likely to associate with an old-fashioned view that a woman’s primary role is in the home.

The Labour MP made the claim in an interview with the Guardian in which she also argued that Brexit could derail the fight for women’s rights.

Harman, who has been a leading campaigner on gender equality for four decades, said she would not trust high-profile out campaigners such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove or Nigel Farage “as far as I can throw them” on the issue... Harman argued that lurking behind the opposition was the idea that women should not be demanding rights in the workplace when they should really be at home.

“We still see occasionally the veil slips,” she said. “And actually there is quite a good match between the people who want to leave the EU and the people who actually want women to be back in the home. Why would we want them to be in charge of our rights? Why would we trust our rights to them?”

Perhaps Johnson, Gove or Farage are indeed old school male chauvinist pigs (there's no evidence for it, but hey), surely we are having a referendum on EU membership, not voting on whether those three form the next government?